"System 1 is the prototype located at Maynard, Massachusetts.
It is being used to develop more advanced time-sharing systems,
and has been operational since Spring of 1964.
Further use of the PDP-6 in Maynard is discussed by
Mr. Harrison ["Dit"] Morse in his article on Page 1.

The system is based on a DEC PDP-6 computer and related
devices. With this is associated an assortment of tapes,
printers, memories, input- output channels, and CRT
displays. Unique to the manipulator project are a number of
special interface connections for the devices described
next. Because of the unusual size and complexity of the
programming systems involved, a very large and fast
core memory (218 words of 40 bits; 2.5- microsecond
cycle-time) is to be added during the summer of 1966.

B. SPECIAL INPUT DEVICES

The sensory equipment includes two visual-input devices: TVA, a
vidicon television camera, and the more precise TVB, an
image-dissector device for controlled-scan analysis. Currently in use
is a continuous- position-and-pressure-detecting tactile sensor, based
on a time-domain reflectometer. For position sensing, there are a
variety of inputs from the hand and arm. A more versatile system has
been designed and is under construction.

C. SPECIAL OUTPUT DEVICES

The manipulator, shown in Figure 1, consists of a
hydraulically-powered, electrically-controlled industrial arm, and a
hand with five degrees of freedom (but with only a simple gripping
ability). The arm was built and given to us by the American Machine
and Foundry Company, and is sufficient for our pres- ent simple goals.
More versatile hands and arms are being developed to be available when
programming is able to cope with more intricate manipulation.

A new arm, almost completed, is shown in Figure 2. This arm,
specifically designed for the project, will be less massive and more
versatile than previous designs. Its two main parts are a shoulder
and an arm. The shoulder is a strong but slim stand, that terminates
in a two-axis rotation joint (not shown in these pictures). The arm
is a modular jointed system. Each section consists of a long
tetrahedral "bone" with two hydraulic-cylinder "biceps". With four
sections, the system resembles a tentacle (or really a lobster arm)
rather than a humanoid or industrial-type arm. Since it is important
that the "hand" bo able to reach any point in a portion of space from
any direction, this requires at least six axes, in addition to
grasping.

The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory ITS system
includes both a PDP-10 computer and a PDP-6, its
slower predecesor. These are configured to give the
PDP-6 a small private core memory which is
accessible by the PDP-10, where the time-sharing
monitor runs. Normally the PDP-6 can not access the
memory being primarily used by the PDP-10. Each
processor has exclusive control over some basic
input-output devices attached to their input-output
signal buss but beyond these devices the busses are
time multiplexed into a single buss with an extra
signal which indicates which processor has the
shared buss for any particular cycle. Devices on the
shared buss normally have simple assignment hardware
which allows one processor at a time to seize each
of them. Until released by their controlling
processor they ignore commands from the other
processor except that an attempt to read their
status will reveal their processor assignment state.

All of the important robotics devices on the
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory system are on the
shared input-Output buss and may be assigned to the
PDP-6 where programs of unusual time criticality or
input-output organization can be developed. Through
ITS, the PDP-6 can be made to appear as a procedure
in a s procedure tree. Thus programs can be easily
loaded into or dumped from the PDP-6 and to some
extent controlled and debugged by a procedure
running on the PDP-10. To further facilitate
interprocessor communication, a device has been made
accessible to each computer by which it can
interrupt the other. If the PDP-10 is thus
interrupted by the PDP-6, ITS will communicate this
to the procedure in the time-sharing system that has
attached the PDP-6. Finally, a system call is
available in ITS to similarly interrupt the PDP-6.

A skeletal pseudo-ITS was written to run on the PDP-6. It has all the necessary hooks to attach the network Code and an even greater propensity than regular ITS to halt at the first sign of trouble. As a result of this means of development, the ARPA network will be usable, in a limited manner, from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory even when ITS or the PDP-10 are unavailable.

System No. 2 has been installed at M.I.T.'s Project MAC
since November 1964. They are planning to use the PDP-6
as an integral time-sharing component interfaced to the
7094 for the purpose of studying visual communication
methods between man and machine. Dr. Minsky of the
institute plans to use it also for development of
programming languages and information retrieval.

Gerald J Sussman at PDP-6 and 340 Display:
(space war controllers at rear?)

The PDP-6 computer, .... was, after delivery in January, 1965,
debugged to the point where later in 1965 time-sharing was
adoped as the operational mode, and multi-user operations
have expanded ever since.

...
Figure 1 shows a typical configuration of users
utilizing the PDP-6 system during the previous year or so
(prior to the summer of 1969 AGS shutdown). By this time
the PDP-6 had been expanded to include 80-96K of 2.0
microsecond core, a 450,000 word disc, five high performance
magnetic tapes, 8-10 DECtapes and two printers.
It also included a remote I/O user station which
contained a printer and DECtapes.

System No. 3 is scheduled to be installed at Brookhaven
National Laboratory this month. To be used in high energy
physics work, this unique system is mounted in a large
trailer and is completely mobile. The PDP-6 replaces the
Merlin System for the purpose of on- line reduction of
data derived from scintillation counter hodoscopes, sonic
spark chambers and wire spark chambers.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/Digital/timeline/1965-3.htm:
The PDP-6 was operated and programmed from Boston
using a 12,000 mile, 5 hole telex code. It proved very
difficult to generate a control C in 5 hole code. At
one point in the session, Robin Frith in Perth asks
Alan Kotok in Massachusetts, "Do you think you could
let us poor Aussies have a bit of core?" Pictured is
Alan Kotok seated at a PDP-6 while Gordon Bell looks
on.

Greetings to all you other DEC-10 aficionados! I started my association
with DEC-10s in March 1969, with the PDP-6 installed at the University
of WA, and finished it on 30-Jun-89 when the KL10 was decommissioned.
The DEC-10 represents the pinnacle of programmers' computers! Sigh.

The PDP-6 was the first computer sold by DEC in Australia and the first general purpose timesharing computer to be installed in Australia.

During 1963, five Australian universities were funded to buy large computers. A team from DEC visited Australia and as a result of seeing this demand, the PDP-6 development direction was changed from physics research to timesharing.

Only one, the University of Western Australia, made the extremely bold decision (for those days) to buy a timesharing computer from a small, unknown company in Massachusetts. The others bought batch machines from IBM and CDC.

A total of 23 PDP-6's were sold world-wide. The Perth one was upgraded over the years and turned Perth into a "DEC" town for two decades.

http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/people/maslen.htm:
Acta Cryst. (1997). A53, 535-536.:
.. a Digital Corporation PDP-6 (serial number 0004), which was
used to control one of the first four-circle diffractometers
in Australia, a Hilger & Watts Y-231, in 1967

My first Time-Shared computer - the Digital Equipment Corp PDP-6.
This was delivered to the University of WA in May 1965, and became the first commercially-delivered time-shared computer anywhere in the world.

Pictured before it left the factory in Maynard, Massachussetts:

Pictured on delivery, with Dennis Moore sweeping up:

Pictured towards the end of its useful life (1972), with Dennis Moore and Yow Kwan:

The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western
Australia will be receiving System No. 4 early in
1965. This will be the first computation center
installation where the central processor will be time
shared via remote teletype stations. The scientific
computation center will be used in crystalography research
and time sharing will aid student training in computer
technology. The PDP-6 will also be used for accounting and
information retrieval by the Administration Department.

PDP6 computer at University of Western Australia. Syd Hall programming real-time interface to a Hilger-Watt diffractometer, 1967
from iucr.org:

http://www.computer-history.info/Page4.dir/pages/Storage.dir/: The Octopus network interconnected the Laboratory's supercomputers and various peripheral services. The original Octopus architecture included a pair of DEC PDP-6 computers, later upgraded to PDP-10s, as the network's central node (the "head" of the octopus).

http://www.computer-history.info/Page4.dir/pages/Octopus.dir/OctopusArticle/Octopus.html:
The current Octopus network was evolved from the original Octopus concept pictured in Figure 1.
The original network consisted of a central system (PDP-6 and core memory buffer) with tentacles extending to worker (host) computer systems and various storage and I/O equipment. It was envisaged that this central system would manage the shared data base (Data Cell and Photostore), be a message concentrator for interactive terminals (TTY's), and manage pools of local and remote I/O equipment. It was even considered possible for the central system to perform some load leveling. Most of the intended host computers at that time had differing batch operating systems so load leveling would have involved some difficult conversion problems.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030402030119/http://www.ornl.gov/ORNL/SC/norman_hardy_1.html:
NH: They and Mel Pirtle were designing the SDS 940,
yes. It was what they called the 930 from XDS, which was
the same company that built the Sigma 7. The 930 was a
machine much inferior to the PDP-10, but it was
cheaper. And Berkeley got one, and sort of did magic on
it--they did their own paging stuff. And that machine
became the prototype for the 940.

Lawrence Radiation Laboratory is scheduled for System
No. 5. The laboratory plans to use the PDP-6 as the I/O
processor in the OCTOPUS System. Its function will be to
control all input/output transfers between each of the
following components:

The largest PDP-6 configuration being built to date is
System No. 6, Keydata Coporation, a subsidiary of Charles
W. Adams Associates, will install the system [in]
Technology Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Keydata
facility, connected to terminals located on subscribers'
premises, will function on-line in real-time to provide
computer services to scientific and business users.

A REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE KEYDATA SYSTEM
Charles W. Adams, C.W. Adams Associates, Inc.

Abstract: The KEYDATA System utilizes a PDP-6
(with 48K core, a million-word drum, a 33-million-character
disc file and a full-duplex Type 630 interface) as the control
facility for on-line, real-time data processing services
offered to business and engineering users through KEYDATA
Stations (Teletypewriters) located on their preimses.
Both packaged services, such as the preparation of invoices
and the entry and correction of FORTRAN programs and data,
operate through the KOP-3 executive routine.

... In the KOP-3 system, the drum serves as the primary storage
for all data and programs 9except KOP-3) and also acts as the file directory,
output buffer, and repository for the most active file records.
Working storage is provided through automatic allocation
of core memory in 32-word pages.

Private e-mail from Bob Clements:

The untold story about Keydata is that it was indeed very
flakey, mainly due to the huge number of small memory
racks. They didn't go to an alternate memory vendor like
MAC did. BUT when they gave the machine back to DEC, DEC
did a thorough shakedown and sold it to United Aircraft.
Where it ran very solidly for some years with almost no
downtime.

There is also a small amount of material related to the
development and lease of the PDP-6 line, including
operation plans, market analyses, product strategies,
budgets, sales information, and the details of a failed
agreement with Charles W. Adams Associates to lease a
PDP-6 for Adams' Keydata Corporation division, which was
ultimately terminated due to DEC’s failure to fulfill its
obligations.

Plano's PDP-1 computer was replaced by a PDP-6 computer in
1965, giving the Physics Department an advanced time-sharing machine
with more power than the University's computing center. This was used
for online checking and analyzing of the bubble-chamber experiments, and
provided computing for the rest of the Department.

A 16K PDP-6 system performing on-line checking and processing
of bubble chamer data for four measuring machines has been
in operation since June, 1965..... With an additional 16K of core
memory and using the new FORTRAN IV compiler, on-line spatial
reconstruction and kinematics will also be implemented. All of
the above are in conjunction with the simultaneous use of the
standard PDP-6 time-sharing software.

Used with PEPR (Precision Encoding and Pattern Recognition) bubble chamber film scanner:
Status of MIT's PEPR's Watts, T L, from CERN
International Conference on Data-Handling Systems in High-Energy
Physics, v 1, 23 - 25 Mar 1970, Cambridge, England
(mentions 75%-82% uptime, more trouble from other H/W than PDP-6)
Active in January 1970 (replaced by a KA10 in March 1970?).
Processed 30-inch film from ANL (Argone National Labs
Zero-Gradient Synchrotron??) and 82-inch film from SLAC

http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/usenet/smp"
John Everett wrote
the original [DEC Timsharing monitor] master/slave multi-processor
support was written by Mike Church at MIT/LNS. We (DEC) took Mike's code and
integrated it into the monitor sometime around 1970 or so.

System No. 8 is scheduled for M.I. T.'s Laboratory for
Nuclear Science. The laboratory will use the PDP-6 to control
their Precision Encoding and Pattern Recognition (PEPR)
System. The role of the PDP-6 in the system is to generate
the scan pattern commands, store the coordinates of the
detected tracks, and single out those tracks which are of
interest to the investigators.

A computer-based scanning system to study bacteria, viruses,
and other microorganisms which infect man is being built by
the University of California at Berkeley under a grant from
the Public Health Service.

The primary purpose of the research program, which will use
the new system, is to make an intensive study of the hereditary
characteristics of microbes. Investigators will try to
learn what nutrients the microorganisms need, to what drugs
they are sensitive, and what happens to them in various
temperature, lighting, and environmental changes.

The scanner will also serve as an experimental diagnostic
system to identify infectious diseases sooner than is now pos-
sible. More rapid diagnosis, permitting faster selection and
administering of the most effective drug, could result in
more rapid recovery in addition to shedding light on the genetics
and physiology of the microorganisms.

The system is being built as part of a 5-year, $1.24-million
program to be administered by the National Institute of General
Medical Sciences. Directing the program is Dr. Donald
A. Glaser, professor of physics and molecular biology at the
University and a Nobel prize winner in physics.

The new system, similar in concept to others being used in
several leading physics laboratories to study the structure of
the atom, will identify microbes by comparing them with
stored images of all known types. Dr. Glaser believes
identification may be possible within 12 to 18 hours after
examining a patient, rather than after the 48-hour incubation
period commonly needed now.

The system will be controlled by a PDP-6 computer. Stored
in its memory will be characteristic patterns of known microbes.
Examining the unknown microbes in a specimen
taken from the patient will be an optical device known as
a flying spot scanner.

The scanner uses a cathode ray tube as a light source and a
light-sensitive device as a detector. The specimen is posi-
tioned between them, and the light beam of the cathode ray
tube sweeps repeatedly across the specimen under control
of the computer. The varying amounts of light reaching the
detector as the light beam passes from transparent to opaque
areas of the specimen enable the computer to recreate in
its memory the mathematical representation it needs to com-
pare the unknown and known patterns.

referenced in http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1966.tb41198.x/abstract
"AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR THE GROWTH AND ANALYSIS OF LARGE NUMBERS OF BACTERIAL COLONIES USING AN ENVIRONMENTAL CHAMBER AND A COMPUTER-CONTROLLED FLYING-SPOT SCANNER*" Donald A Glaser and Willard H. Wattenburg;
Volume 139, Axenic Cultures and Defined Media, pp 243-257

*
This investigation has been supported in part by the Atomic Energy Commission and is currently supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant NGR-05–003–091, by the Public Health Service through research grants GM 12524 and GM 13244 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the Joint Services Electronics Program under Grant AF-AFOSR–139–65.

"There was one at RAND. It replaced the Johnniac, and only ran JOSS,
an interactive language like a grown-up Basic,
running on a custom golf-ball typewriter console.
It was in RAND's machine room that I saw an IBM 360/44,
inspiring me to design "Read-in Mode" on the PDP-10."
` [RCC1990]

Rochester University's Nuclear Structure Research Laboratory
will be installing an on-line time-sharing computer system
for experimenting with its new Emperor Van de Graaf Accelerator
some time in January. The system will be used for time-shared
computation and on-line data acquisition for several nuclear experments.
Major elements of the system are PDP-6 and PDP-8 computers and a new
intercommunication subsystem.

[DECUSCOPE 1965] Volume 4, Number 11-12, November-December 1965
New PDP-6 Delegate: Anthony Yonda, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York

http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/sailaway.htm:
"The original PDP-6 system had just 64k words of storage (which
occupied eight large cabinets) and used microtapes for
secondary storage. A fixed-head disc file built by Librascope,
added in 1968, was supposed to function both as a swapping
store and a permanent file store, but it turned out to be so
temperature-sensitive that it was useless for file
storage. The six remarkably large discs in this system, which
were each 4 feet in diameter, were eventually sold as coffee
tables -- I have one in my living room. Despite its large
physical size, this disc system had a capacity of only about
100 megabytes. More reliable disks made by IBM, Ampex and DEC
were added in later years."

Retired 1980:
"Stanford's PDP-6 was shown at DECUS in 1984. The
machine was transferred to a DEC warehouse after that
event. There are no records of this machine being
given to the Computer Museum, which was not part of
DEC in 1984. In the late 1990s Compaq donated the
contents of the DEC internal archives to The Computer
Museum History Center. The Fast Memory cabinet from
the Stanford PDP-6 was part of that donation. There is
no evidence that the modules sold at the Boston
computer museum gift shop were from the Stanford
PDP-6, nor is there any evidence that the museum had
ever had this machine in its possession." [wikipedia]

There are 12 modules in original DEC cardboard box. The object
is from Stanford's PDP-6 (from Bruce Kennard, Stanford DEC
CE). The object category needs to verified by content
specialist. Exhibit label for a PDP-6 Module (including
contextual paragraph) is located in Object File. -- JAC
10/25/2001

?

University of Pennsylvania (Medical School), Philadelphia, PA

"... DEC started to ship
all its products by truck. Twelve-foot trucks. DEC
learned a lot more at a well-known bridge on Route
62 in Hudson, Massachusetts. An eleven-foot bridge.
(This is where DEC made its first drop shipment.)
The PDP-6 that made this unfortunate journey was
already some months late for the University of
Pennsylvania. DEC, not having its own van at the
time, had rented some space in a moving van filled
with household goods. The PDP-6 was in the back of
the van, and it appears that the furniture
successfully cushioned the impact of the computer.
They did have to shovel the remains out of the truck
afterwards, however. (The PDP-6 was able to be
repaired in a couple of more months.)"
[PH1984]

The School of Medicine became owner of the fastest and most
flexible computer on the Pennsylvania campus December 5 when the
new Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-6 digital computer began
operation. It replaces a computer system installed three and
one-half years ago. The new computer, which cost $750,000, was
purchased under a grant from the U. S. Public Health Service,
which also has granted operational funds for the next six years.
It has been installed in the Medical School's Alfred Newton
Richards Medical Research Building.

"The PDP-6 could support the Data Products
disk. That drive had about a dozen platters, each
of which was provided with an independently-movable,
hydraulically actuated arm.(*) When the heads got
moving, with the hydraulic hoses moving in and out
with the actuators, it looked like a spaghetti
factory. Dave Nixon of Oxford bought an IBM disk
drive for his system. Not knowing how to program it
as a disk drive, he made it emulate 40 DECtape
drives."
[PH1984]

[PLB: I seem to recall Al Blackington saying he had
done the disk driver for a disk like that. Could there
have been two??]

Work on the Dynamic Modeling System began, effectively, in October,
1969, when a used PDP-6 computer with 32K words of memory was
delivered to Project MAC.

AI: CENT; TAPES SAVE

Full ITS first ran on the AI PDP6, and was ported to the DM PDP6.
Later, PDP10s became available, and the labs acquired some of the
earliest ones -- the AI-KA10 (AI Lab's machine), the ML KA-10 (used
by the MathLab, Theory of Computation, Automatic Programming, and
certain other LCS groups), and the DMS KA-10 (Dynamic Modeling
Systems, also used by certain other LCS groups); these replaced the
PDP-6s, which were slowly phased out.

Our experiments were run on the MITDG PDP-6/10 using what we have
affectionately called our 'interim interim NCP' (IINCP). Under the
IINCP the IMP Interface is treated as a single-user I/O device which
deals in raw network messages. The software supporting necessary
system calls includes little more than the basic interrupt-handling
and buffering schemes to be used later by the NCP. In short, the
user-level programs which brought us to our historic moments were
written close to the hardware with full knowledge of IMP-HOST
Protocol (BBN 1822).

Page 4: "The Harvard-MIT Graphics Experiment"

At Harvard are a PDP-10 Time-sharing System and a graphics
oriented PDP-1, both connected to Harvard's IMP. At MITDG
are a PDP-6/10 Time-sharing System and an E&S Line Drawing
System. It was felt (Messre. Barker, Cohen, McQuillan,
Metcalfe, and Taft) that the time had come to demonstrate
that the network could make remote resource available - to
give Harvard access to the E&S at MITDG via the network.

The Dynamic Modeling Group, formed at the beginning of the
year to develop techniques and an interactive computer system
to facilitate the formulation and testing of ideas in terms
of computer-program models, acquired as a foundation for its
system a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-6/10 computer
and the very sophisticated and responsive time-sharing software
developer since 1965 by members of the Artificial Inetlligence
Group.

.... In the areas of Computer Networks and Computer
Graphics, the past year's efforts were mainly
groundwork. The Interface Message Processor that will
connect Multics and one or both of the PDP-6/10
computer systems to a coast-to-coast network of
research computers was installed, and an advanced
display subsystem was incorporated into the dynamic
modeling computer system. At the end of the year, the
net- work and graphics programs were shifting into
high gear.

Page 59:

... at Project MAC, both the Multics GE 645 system and the Dynamic
Modeling and Computer Graphics Groups' PDP-6/10 system are network
hosts.

According to Tim Anderson, the Project MAC group Dynamic
Modeling/Computer Graphics took delivery of the very last
PDP-6 from a previous owner. They adopted the AI Lab's ITS
operating system, but shortly after moved onto a PDP-10.

(possibly a second life for #6)

United Aircraft (United Technologies) Research Laboratories, East Hartford, Connecticut

"When I joined DEC [from LNS] in '68, the PDP-10 had just started
shipping. Most of the history recounted in that talk came from
my own memories and from hearing stories from people like Alan
Kotok or Tom Hastings on our regular dinners out at Chez
Claude's or the local Chinese restaurant."